Have you ever had food poisoning?

I think twice. Both on vacations which I do not do well. I think it took me 24 hrs and never saw a doctor.

I got food poisoning from homemade potato chip and it took me 3 days to recover. It’s been five years since that happened, and I still won’t touch them it doesn’t matter if it’s homemade or store bought.

I had a bad lobster the night before my father’s memorial service. Up all night, sick, sick, sick. The whole weekend was a nightmare. Haven’t had lobster since.

The sickest i’ve been in my life was from eating bad shrimp. To this day, very rarely eat strimp. It was years before I ate strimp again.

Not that i know of (unless you call a shrimp allergy food poisoning, hehe).

However, apparently many more people get food poisoning than they realize, from eating contaminated meat (because of the unsanitary conditions of slaughter houses and factory farms). So what is often attributed to a 24 hour stomach bug or something, is sometimes actually food poisoning.

I’ve heard seafood poisoning is the worst. My sister got it and had her stomach pumped. It was an old Dallas chain , the Zider Zee.
I think that’s how it’s spelled? They were dumping their unsold seafood into my sister b4 they closed. Zyder?

I got it from a bad baked potato once. I haven’t had a baked potato outside of my own house since.

Funny how people won’t touch any kind of food they suspect to have poisoned them, even as innocuous as chips. Gotta love evolution!

Had steak on Friday, Saturday morning got up to vomit first thing in the morning. G/F and I took turns vomiting rest of the weekend, bringing up some blood as well, and it felt like someone was kicking you in the kidneys all the time. Diarhea as well. G/F managed to get up Monday for her work, threw up in the shower, it was still part of what we ate Friday. By late Monday most of it was done. Good times.

Numerous times. I want to say “countless” times. But.., I frequent the most “authentic” Mexican food places in SoCal, so I gleefully take my chances and relish the dangers.

The last time I got sick a co-worker and I went to a place called Paco’s Tacos. He and I were both delirious-sick for two days.

Before that I was violently sick from a Baja Fresh (Lincoln and Wilshire). Not exactly authentic, but I got sick from them just the same. That’s the worst store I’ve encountered in the chain, by the way, which is very unfortunate because I live only a few blocks away.

Before that was from a Mexican food place now closed.

Before that was from my favorite Italian food place in Santa Monica, Frito Misto. The Atomic Pasta is one of my all-time favorite dishes, but that one day it smelled/tasted slightly off, but I ate it anyway. Bad decision. After about a year, I went back to them though. I have their phone number memorized, so it’s impossible not to forgive them.

Maybe 8 times total, with another 8 questionable calls. It’s very hard to positively confirm. Very hard. I often wish I was a Health Department inspector, and could order a meal and take it directly to some lab and measure its bacteria content, and fine the negligent owners into impoverished oblivion.

I want to mention the movie Fight Club, and the “Lobster Bisque”.

A good buddy of mine owns restaurants. He talks about “Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points” (HACCP). Basically in the entire chain of delivery from picking to eating certain foods can only be in the “danger zone” (above 41 degrees, below 140 degrees) for 30–45min total, because of exponential bacteria growth. Various protocol for various foods. These bacteria are in all foods, and stomach acid’s purpose is to kill them, but when certain volumes are ingested it can get into your system.

He stated that in his training he was told that “90% of all salsa bars contain some fecal matter”. Apparently salsa bars are the most egregious violation areas in common restaurants – which is entirely painful and unfair, because salsa bars are some of my favorite places on earth.

Food is a medium for sauce.

If you call the Health Department, and they have a second corroborating complaint, it’s called an “outbreak”, and they have various protocol to send someone out and inspect/test (in the US).

My friend states that this really screws the owners though because it’s not removed from their record, and often food arrives from distributors tainted and the restaurant owners have no way to test or know. He states it’s best to contact the restaurant owner directly and say “Your food didn’t agree with me – I just wanted to let you know – have you had other complaints?...” so that they have feedback themselves and can try to track it down. Obviously they have the most to lose.

I guess employees who are sick inevitably get it in the food, which is a bid problem. And I’m told studies have shown that employees not washing their hands properly after going #2 is by far the most common critical violation within the restaurant industry.

More than you ever wanted to know. For posterity.

@ipso Thank you for that informative post and sharing the perspective from a restaurant owner’s point-of-view.

As @NaturallyMe pointed out, there is a difference between food-poisoning and a 24-hour intestinal bug. I often wonder if people self-diagnosing what caused their illness may have misdiagnosed. This includes myself. Some cases are clear-cut, but not all are. Does it take a visit to the doctor or clinic to differentiate between the two?

@ipso Wow I learn something today… Thanks.

Oh yes, I didn’t know which side of myself to place over the toilet bowl!!!!! Still have nightmares about it!

@Pied_Pfeffer Apparently some people are “diagnosed” with a stomach bug, or assume it was a 24 hour stomach bug when the afflication passes after a day or so, but unless tests are done to see what’s actually wrong, they’ll never know that what they actually had was food poisoning.

@NaturallyMe I think I probably had e coli but a nurse later told me if I didn’t get checked then I never had it. Lay on the floor for three days getting up just to get to the bathroom and tell me it wasn’t.

Yes, been down this road twice. The first time was a bad hot dog at a golf course. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t being hot held at the right temperature. The second time was my own stupid fault. I ate a sandwich that I left out too long and the mayo & chicken went funky. :(

After going through a ServSafe sanitation course, I’m far more careful than I used to be.

No I haven’t which is a surprise after eating my ex daughter in law’s cooking.

I once suffered a Grand Mal seizure as a result of food poisoning. Not fun!